The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human NatureBerman, Louis
History
The Glands Regulating Personality: A Study of the Glands of Internal Secretion in Relation to the Types of Human Nature
Berman, Louis
Endocrinology; Personality
An artist will see in a face the past history of generations, a
narrative of the adventures of the blood, a record of tears and
smiles, wrinkles and dimples, the victories and defeats of buried
drudgery and romance. These signatures which the Faculty of Life have
scribbled or engraved over it as upon a diploma, bespeak for him
spiritual moments. To the student of the internal secretions the
lines, expressions, attitudes are important for they tell of the state
of tensions and strains in the vegetative apparatus with which they
are inseparably connected. It is when one comes to the consideration
of the face as a complex of brows, eyes, nose, lips and jaws that he
becomes most interested. For in the modeling and tone of every one of
the features each of the endocrine glands has something to say. In
consequence there has been described the hyperpituitary face, and the
hyperthyroid face, the subthyroid face and the subpituitary face, the
adrenal face, the eunuchoid face and the ovarian face and also the
thymic.
To bring to mind an immediate complete image of the hyperthyroid face,
one should think of Shelley. The oval shape of it, with the delicate
modeling of all the features, the wide, high brow, the large,
vivacious, prominent eyes with the glint of a divine fire in them and
the sensitive lips all belong to the classical picture. Generally
flushed over the cheek-bones, there is undoubtedly a certain
effeminate effect associated with it. At least, it is the least animal
and brutish of the faces of man.
On the other hand, the subthyroid face is that of the cretin and
cretinoid idiot, in a mild degree. So characteristic that we recognize
the portrait in the descriptions of Pliny in early Roman tunes and of
Marco Polo in his Asiatic travels. Coarseness, dullness, pudginess are
its keynotes. Irregular features, tendency to wide separation of the
eyes and pug nose, sallow, puffy complexion, waxy thickened nose and
eyelids, deep-set, listless, lacklustre eyebrows, and thick prominent
lips comprise the catalogue of the physiognomy. On the whole, the sort
of face one passes in the street as stupid and common. But there are
a number of fascinating and marvelous varieties of the stupid and
common.
The adrenal face is most often dark or freckled. It tends to be
irregularly broadish. It is hairy, one is struck forcibly. There is a
low hair line, which makes the brow appear rather low, and there is
a good deal of hair over the cheek bones. The adrenal type is round
headed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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